James Webb - Imane Farès

James WebbTexts / Press

41 rue Mazarine, 75006 Paris+33 1 46 33 13 [email protected]

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Reflections on Process All the Unseen Things

James Webb is a South African artist based in Cape Town. His work, framed in large-scale installations in galleries and museums, or as unannounced interventions in public spaces, often makes use of ellipsis, displacement and détournement to explore the nature of belief and the dynamics of communication in our contemporary world. Webb’s practice employs a variety of media including audio, installation and text, referencing aspects of the conceptualist and minimalist traditions, as well as his academic studies in advertising, comparative religion and theatre.

Webb has presented his work around the world at major institutions and exhibitions, including Wanås Konst in Sweden, the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, UK, the 13th Biennial of Sharjah (2017), 12th Bienal de la Habana (2015), 55th Biennale di Venezia (2013), the 2009 Melbourne International Arts Festival and the 8th Biennale d’Art Contemporain de Lyon (2007).

theotherjameswebb.com

All the Unseen ThingsJames Webb

reflections on process in sound, 2017

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Intruduction

This text is a consideration of the unseen things: the processes behind the ongoing artworks Prayer (1999, ongoing) and There’s No Place Called Home (2004, ongoing). Both projects are iterative and made afresh in new locations, and could be described as site-responsive, audio installation pieces with relational concerns. Both use minimal visual elements, basic audio playback systems, and are augmented by the context of the specific site to suggest various poetic and political readings.

The thematics of these artworks include, but are not limited to, religion, society, and multiculturalism (Prayer), and the materiality of field recordings, environmental contingency, and migration (There’s No Place Called Home). Prayer started as a reaction to the still very segregated, post-Apartheid cityscape of my hometown Cape Town, and There’s No Place Called Home to the northern winter that I found myself in on one of my first trips overseas to Kitakyushu, Japan. Over the last decade, I have seen both artworks be exhibited widely and garner new audiences and theoretical interpretations from the different circumstances they have been shown in. Out of all my formal projects over 18-years these two have travelled the most and show signs of being able to be personalised by local audiences, allowing the works to develop relationally and socially in ways that would have been hard to plan or to do on my own. Herewith are some notes on the creative processes and challenges of each project.

Audience member at Prayer, Johannesburg, 2012. Image by Anthea Pokroy.


Installation view of Prayer, Johannesburg, 2012. Image by Anthea Pokroy.


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Prayer

Prayer is a multi-channel audio installation comprising sound recordings of vocal worship collected from as many religious communities as possible found in the host city where the piece is exhibited. The artwork originally began with the question of what would it be like to listen to all the multi-faith prayers of a city together? With religion playing such a strong role in historical and

contemporary society and politics, influencing everything from culture and law to fashion and diets, I believe it is an important subject for artistic engagement. As I am based in Cape Town and the project requires local involvement, the process begins with me working with the inviting art institution through an assistant there. Researching and contacting the groups can take up to two months before recording starts. The idea is to get as much participation as possible, and to get an in-depth insight into the religious and spiritual life of the city.

I have a degree in Religious Studies from the University of Cape Town, and this has proved a solid base for the theoretical preparation of the project. Google is a good start, but input from regional interfaith initiatives and university religious studies and theological programs is a great help in finding out about what faiths are represented in the city, and how to contact them. The process is exhaustive, starting with looking for all religions that might be present there, and there is–in my experience–always much more than expected. Depending on the location, these have included most schools of Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and Sikhism. The search expands by looking for denominations, off-shoots and reform movements, as well as so-called minority group faiths such as Mandaean, Yarsanism, and Zoroastrianism, and pre-Christian, traditional religious practices and new age groups. All of the faiths are further looked for in terms of community and location,

St. Mary the Less, recording location for Prayer, Johannesburg, 2012.



for example the Vietnamese Catholic and Buddhist communities of Malmö.

Thuy Hoa Thiên Liên, Song To Guanyin – Prayer (Malmö)

Searching continues in civic organisations such as prisons, hospital multi-faith centres, and other community organisations, for example the Mission to Seafarers church ministering to visiting sailors at the Cape Town harbour (Prayer, Cape Town, 2000). Remarkable sacred spaces, such as the Johannesburg Shree Siva Subramaniar Temple in Melrose, a safe place where Nelson Mandela purportedly hid during numerous Apartheid-era raids, are approached to develop the symbolic geographical and architectural elements contained in the concept of the artwork.

Guru Shanmuga Sivam – Prayer (Johannesburg)

Lastly, well known individuals associated with local faith are contacted directly, for example Imam Abdul Wahid Pedersen, a noteworthy Danish Imam who was the first Muslim leader to conduct Friday sermons in Danish in 1997 (Prayer, København, 2010).

It would be good to mention here that I am not just looking to record and include spiritual leaders; all religious people are welcome to participate in this artwork. It’s useful to start the research with leaders and organisations, so as to reach out

Shree Siva Subramaniar Temple in Johannesburg.


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to the greater community through their established networks and congregations. All participants are seen as equal, and their assistance and contribution greatly appreciated and respected. In this regard, more solitary and hermetic practices such as neo-pagan shamanism are proactively looked for as they can be harder to find compared to the statistically larger community-based religious traditions. I specifically look for a gender balance in the participants, and in cases such as Stockholm, Malmö, and Johannesburg – the 3 largest versions of the piece – have found it with ease. For ethical

reasons pertaining to representation and agency, no under-18s are recorded.

Jaya Radhe Jaya Krishna – Prayer (Stockholm)

Contact is made by the inviting museum where the installation will be presented, enabling the faith groups to identify an institution and a local person with the project. This adds to the credibility of the initiative, and also enables the museum to establish networks in and around the city; networks that can remain after the installation has opened and that could lead to new initiatives. Email works well, but nothing beats a phone call to establish rapport, and to give immediate answers to the questions and concerns someone might have. This is followed by an email or letter with detailed information on the intentions and practicalities of artwork, as well as references to other people within that faith that have taken part in Prayer in the preceding iterations.

Understandably, some people are initially skeptical about the project. Themes of religion and contemporary art in today’s Western society can trigger controversial references such as Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ (1987) or some of the installations of Damien Hirst and Banks Violette. Whereas I think the devotional and conceptual implications of Serrano’s artwork are often misunderstood, Prayer needs to be contextualised carefully and generously at all times.

Even terms like “sound art,” a category I don’t readily identify with, must be unpacked for clear understanding in the process of this

Sri Devi Karumariamman Seva Sungam, recording location for Prayer, Johannesburg 2012.


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piece. Thanks to existing networks formed from earlier versions of Prayer, new participants can also be found and invited to participate through mutual contacts. The contribution from the Eckankar community in 6 of the manifestations of Prayer is thanks to Niels-Jul Yrvin and the other Bergen members whose support and encouragement in the 2010 edition led to interest and involvement from Eckists in other cities.

Birmingham Eckankar – Prayer (Birmingham)

In a different way, the Sultan Bahu Centre, a Sufi mosque in Mayfair, Johannesburg, very kindly approached local churches and the Sri Sathya Sai Centre in the neighbourhood on my behalf. Here my and the museum’s job is greatly aided by people who understand and are enthusiastic enough about the initiative and its multi-faith aims to promote it to others. It’s a fascinating and very rewarding process, and the links made in the research tend to generate more and

Shree Laxmi Narayan Mandir, recording location for Prayer, Birmingham 2011.


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more links, and these become valuable participatory partners and contacts for the museum and the people involved. A very wide net is thrown, and we strive to be highly inclusive, and operate on a very significant level. For art institutions and museums wanting to broaden their community awareness and outreach, the process of producing Prayer is a powerful way to do this. On average over the last 9 iterations of the piece, more than 100 multilingual prayers are recorded from an average of 65 different faiths in each host city. The current exhibition of Prayer (Stockholm)1 exhibited at Historiska Museet comprises 155 recordings from 172 people, totalling just over 7-hours of working footage.

The recording period can take between 3 to 5 weeks. 3 weeks is an absolute minimum, and would only be possible if we were very organised and schedule 5+ recording sessions a day. 4 to 5-weeks is more realistic, and would really make for some exciting results as the project tends to gather more attention and interest as the recording process goes on. At the arranged meeting, a brochure is used to show the new participants the previous versions of the installation, particularly what it looks like and explaining how audience members access the artwork. Transparent communication is vital as the artwork is engaging with spiritual, personal and cultural views and representation, and as I am a visitor to that city and this is a project that I wish to have continue in many more

1 For details see exhibition notices on page 57.

instances, my intentions and credentials need to be crystal clear and accessible.

Saint Nicholas the Enlightener of Japan Orthodox Christian Church, recording location for Prayer, Johannesburg 2012.



I conduct all the recordings myself, with the museum assistant present, often to help with bilingual translations in the case of the 4 Scandinavian editions, and as well to have a representative of the art institution there. Normally the recordings are private, in as much as they are not sonic documentations of congregational services, but are specifically arranged sessions–one-on-one–where worship can be attended to properly with every care and attention. The sessions take place at a location that is convenient to the person being recorded, and often is their place of worship which allows for the acoustics of the holy space and its significance to be present in the piece. There a suitable recording spot is found

based on the comfort of the participant as well as sonic factors such as acoustics, activity within the premises, and external traffic. The microphones are set up, and a volume check is done. We then compose ourselves, I roll tape, and the prayer can start at their convenience.

The conclusion of the recording is always quiet and introspective in so much as a returning from somewhere else and reorientation in our day to day reality. There are a few moments after the prayer concludes where the participant and I are silent, and in some cases quite emotional. Thereafter we talk about the project and other issues pertaining to the themes here, and if I am lucky I get to stay for tea and a tour of the place of worship. These pre and post-recording interactions are in many ways as important as the recordings themselves, and go a great way towards creating a fellowship between the art institution and faith community, as well as between artist and participant.

The material recorded falls under the general term of ‘vocal worship,’ and this term is left to be interpreted by the participants. No one style of prayer is privileged over another, and all forms of spoken prayers–formal, extemporaneous, liturgical, and personal, are recorded. Chants, hymns, nasheeds, nigun, and mantras are recorded too, as well as readings and recitations. In the case of organisations such as the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) who pray in silence, a reading is recorded, for example texts by George Fox read by members of the Woodbrooke Quaker Study

Trinity Methodist, recording location for Prayer, Birmingham, 2011.


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Centre for Prayer (Birmingham) in 2011. The languages, accents, and sonic forms of the prayers often differ, as does the subject matter, but are all marked with a deep sense of sincerity. No musical instruments are used other than the voice. In any edition of Prayer, there could several interpretations of ‘vocal worship’ within just one instance, for example members of a mosque could offer recitations, dua, na’at (poetic hymn), and an Adhan (call to prayer) as in the case of the Stockholm Mosque (Prayer, Stockholm, 2016).

Marrakchi Abdelaziz performing the Adhan – Prayer (Stockholm)

The adhan recorded there is an important social document as it is an internal call to prayer since Stockholm only has one public adhan broadcast only for Jumu’ah prayers (Friday noon) at Fittja Grand Mosque in Botkyrka, which incidentally has the tallest minaret in Europe.2

There is no time limit, and some prayers like The Lord’s Prayer are under a minute, while a Nasheed or Dhikr can last up to 20-minutes. No contribution is superfluous, and I use all the recordings made in the process, and everyone signs a release form confirming their understanding of the artwork, and certifying that their contribution can be used as part of the installation and its archived documentation. I specifically state in the contract the the recordings made will not be remixed or taken out of context of the

2 Find and article about the tallest minaret in Europe at hurriyetdailynews.com

project, nor will they be used by any third party. The recordings are shared with the participants in digital and CD form, with them free to publish their recording at will.Technically, I employ a Røde NT3G for clear and direct voice takes, plus a bespoke SASS unit designed by Alex Bozas housing 2 AT4022s for a full stereo array which is excellent for prayer groups and choirs.

Mar Yousif Syrisk katolska kyrkas kör i Södertälje – Prayer (Stockholm)

The prayers are used in full, with the top of the recording starting at the beginning of the prayer, and extraneous bits pre- and post- the recording removed. Light EQ is used to roll off low frequency rumble from passing cars. No further editing or transformation is done.

The presentation of the recordings is the next step. The artwork consists of a refined red carpet (4 x 16m) with 12 circular, black speaker cones arranged in a grid-like formation placed thereon. The audio wires run underneath the carpet to a series of standard amplifiers and unsynchronised, solid state, media players: basic technology, perfectly satisfactory for museum purposes in terms of reliability and ease of use.

The carpet acts as a frame and a plinth, signifying a designate artistic space. At any given time, all the speakers play at once, and each speaker transmits a separate and unsynchronised


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prayer recording from a unique selection of the recorded material particular to that speaker. In other words, each speaker has its own selection of prayers played sequentially, resulting in an ever-changing, polyphonous sound environment. I normally explain this to participants as each speaker having its own unique “playlist” of prayers, and to listen to the entire piece would mean spending time at each speaker as the day progresses.

In looking for a way for the audience to choreographically participate in the piece, I elected to have the speakers placed directly on the carpet. I also decided to have the audience remove their shoes before stepping onto the carpet–an act that denotes reverence and hygiene in many cultures. More so, the haptic effect is one of comfort: feet touching soft material. Once inside the work, they may wander around the installation freely, able to move between the different simultaneous playback creating their own mix of the voices emanating from the speakers, or they can kneel down to listen to individual prayers broadcast sequentially from any single speaker.

This act of kneeling references genuflection, and can also be considered as supplication: a further mark of respect with the listener moving in close to attend to the words of the prayer. This experience of focused listening to a single recording is always kept within in the context of the multi-faith intentions of the work as the other recordings can still be heard at the same time in the periphery coming from the other speakers. The conceptual implications in this spatialised, multi-channel technique is that the one can be heard in relation to the many, and depending on where you are standing, vice versa. The visual and technical set up, amount of speakers, or logistical conditions of Prayer do not change with each version, only the local recordings do.

The prayers are not announced in the speakers, nor are the speakers labeled in any way. This is to have the listener approach

Kneeling audience member at Prayer, Johannesburg, 2012. Image by A Pokroy.


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This unique situation was curated to show the difference between how religion and art was expressed and displayed in the past–that being predominately a visual and monotheistic spectacle–to how it could be presented now as a sonic, multicultural, and interfaith relational experience. The symbolism of the multi-faith prayers being exhibited at the Swedish History Museum, and thus seen as being part of Swedish heritage, is very significant in the context of

each speaker with an open mind as to what they will hear. There will be some recordings in a language that each listener can understand, and others that the listener might not recognise. The experience of Prayer’s audio has been fondly described as the sound of (their) “God’s answering machine” by several participants. Two text panels are mounted on the gallery walls to credit the people and organisations that participated in the artwork, and to offer curatorial and contextual, but not interpretive, information on the piece. The minimal visual form, as well as the text panels, provides a space where the audience can have a non-prescriptive experience with the artwork and to consider its related themes.

Visually, the installation is exhibited in its own space away from other artworks so as to create an encompassing and focused experience. I have received requests to present the work outdoors or in smaller spaces, but I have to refuse these. The work needs to be in a dedicated gallery where it can be broadcast at the correct volume, with enough physical room for the artwork to look and sound like it should, and not be interrupted or taken out of its specific artistic context. The venue cannot have existing religious or political signs or affiliations to affect the interpretation of Prayer. The only instance that this rule was altered was for the History Unfolds exhibition curated by Helene Larsson Pousette for Historiska Museet, the Swedish History Museum in Stockholm. Here Prayer was placed in a gallery to be in dialogue with the historical Catholic artefacts collected by the museum.

Audience member at Prayer, Stockholm, 2016. Image by Katarina Nimmervoll.


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dialogues as to what constitutes Swedish culture, as well as the monotheistic and “exotic” curatorial gaze of the past. The importance of these issues was further addressed by the curatorial team by creating a series of talks and tours of the museum’s collection given by invited participants of Prayer responding to the museum’s objects through the lens of their religious perspectives. Two special highlights were Phramahaboonthin Taosiri, a monk from the Värmdö Buddharam Temple administering a blessing on the famous “Helgö Buddha,” a bronze statue of the Buddha dated to 6th century Kashmir that was found in a Viking grave in Birka, west of Stockholm, and Imam Mahmoud Khalfi of the Stockholm Mosque identifying and translating a hidden piece of Islamic calligraphy, disguised as a floral decoration, on a medieval Christian altar piece.

To honour the process of making the artwork, the recorded participants are invited to a special vernissage before the show is open to the general public and press. This is a very interesting and important part of the project as it is a kind of socio-physical manifestation of the theme of the work: the religions of that city being together in one space; a situation that does not occur very often. Here the participants can hear their recordings in action as well as listen to the other prayers that constitute the installation. Furthermore, the participants can meet each other, and the museum can officially take on its role as custodian of the prayers shared. I believe that this kind of event can also work towards celebrating and including the participants of a project as audience

members for the artwork, as opposed to the work being only viewed by regular museum audiences and critics.

Looking back at the progression of the work, it’s interesting to note that the earliest version started in 1999, before 11 September 2001 and its divisive religious and political implications. Over the years I have noticed new interpretations of the artwork relating to contemporary issues. Whereas the concept and technique of Prayer remains the same in each instance, the locality, contemporary politics, and current concerns can refresh the work every time, and provide new challenges and solutions. As time goes on, I feel that the previous versions become a bit like time capsules containing the concerns and hopes from the period each edition was produced. There is also a sense of the changing religious demographics of the city. Sadly, two of the Rabbis that participated in the original Cape Town edition, Rabbi David Hoffmann, and Rabbi Elihu Jacob Steinhorn, have both passed away since the exhibition. The same of Qari Yusuf Noorbhai, a venerable Koranic teacher considered one of the finest reciters in South Africa, died in 2016 with his contribution to Prayer (Johannesburg) in 2012 being the last recital recording he made.

Hafez Yusuf Noorbhai – Prayer Johannesburg 2012

These events now give a historical perspective to the recordings and the artwork, and the memory of the late Rabbi Hoffmann, Rabbi Steinhorn, and Qari Noorbhai live on through the project whenever it is shown.


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My intentions with this piece are to initiate an open-ended situation whereby the city can be investigated through the make up its religious movements and the many subjects that links to. For me the techniques used in the production of the piece and the display allow for themes of identity, migration, history, and communication to make themselves present and be questioned. In bringing all the faiths into one space, the audience is accessing a socio-political space: visitors are confronted by statements of belief, as well as the diversity of community, culture and philosophy present in the city they are in. The audience is in a position to listen and consider other people’s points of view, and draw their own conclusions, maps and connections through the geography that the recordings create; a process that is as important to the artwork as its exhibition itself.

There’s No Place Called Home

Somewhat of a sibling to Prayer, There’s No Place Called Home shares some of its concerns with site-specificity, hospitality,

There’s No Place Called Home at Folkets Park Malmö, Sweden, 2016. Image by Ricard Estay.


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and plurality, but is articulated through the media and subject of birdsong. This piece involves audio speakers hidden in trees and used to broadcast recordings of birds not found in that location, for example calls of a Taiwan Yuhina (Yuhina brunneiceps), endemic to the island of Taiwan, relayed from the Folketspark in Malmö (There’s No Place Called Home (Folketspark, 2016). The piece is exhibited in outdoor public spaces, such as parks, sculpture gardens, and in some cases

remote, rural locations. The incongruous audio is unannounced and unadvertised, and is staged as a hack into nature.

Conceptually, I found my way to this artwork when I was an artist in residence at the Center for Contemporary Art in Kitakyushu, Japan, in 2004. Faced with my first experience of a northern hemisphere winter, and a curiosity towards the common use of loudspeakers in Japanese public space for advertising and municipal purposes, I started thinking about matters pertaining to displacement and exoticism, as well as ways to both reuse and activate field recordings. Growing up in the Western Cape province of South Africa with its plentiful avifauna, I was always attracted to the biological as well as cultural significance of birds. With their ability to fly and the projected agency that suggests, as well as their extraordinary vocal abilities, birds have captured the imagination of humans for ages.

Aware that bird vocalisations are some of the most recorded sounds on the planet, generally for conservation and categorisation purposes, I was soon became interested in the very politics of the vocalisations. What we might take as being melodic and musical, with received cultural associations of relaxation like a kind of natural Muzak, is in fact a series of mating calls, identity displays, and the staking of territory. As Jacques Attali points out in Noise: The Political Economy of Music (1977), birdsong is “inscribed from the start within the panoply of power.” I was further influenced by wanting to warp and challenge the often frowned

There’s No Place Called Home in Kitakyushu, Japan, 2004.


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upon ornithological practice of sonic “baiting” wherein an audio recording of a local birdcall is sounded in the vicinity where that species might hear it and respond, with the hope of it making its visual presence known. This lead me to think of broadcasting audio recordings of birdcalls as a form of sonic graffiti.

I sought to subvert these techniques and use foreign birds in a local environment as an absurd version of returning the sound to nature, but also as a means of defamiliarising the landscape, and interrogating certain human themes through the metaphor of birds. It’s a simple image: the local broadcasting of a song of

a foreign bird, but I believe it is deceptively simple idea, and has multiple interpretations. With the introduction of the vocalisations of a foreigner, the artwork seeks to symbolically turn the various sites into meeting points for strangers, hosts and guests, and position the intervention site as a space of both refuge and invasion.

The image can be likened to a worst possible Lonely Hearts Column where the recording of foreign bird will not be recognised or responded to by the local birds. Or perhaps the foreign bird is interpreted by the human audience as the symbol of an invader. In this instance I am reminded of the curious story of Hirō Onoda, the

There’s No Place Called Home in Bergen, 2015. Image by Bjørn Mortenson.


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Japanese soldier who didn’t realise that World War 2 had ended and continued ‘defending’ or occupying the Philippine island of Lubang. This is another potential view of the artwork–the lone vigilante out there–this solitary bird waiting it out, looking after its annexed turf.

Since 2004, over the course of this artwork’s lifespan, analyses relating to the so-called migration crisis, ecological contingency and the Anthropocene, and auguries–the traditional notion that the activity of birds can be construed as omens–have come into play depending on the context of the site and the issues of the day. As Brandon LaBelle writes of the project’s Norwegian edition in 2015 (There’s No Place Called Home, Bergen), “The narrative remains mysterious, and yet unmistakably present: somewhere something happened – which delivered this foreigner to Bergen” (Labelle 2015).

Looking back at it now, I can also link the artwork to the history of cinema. The 1938 film, Tarzan and the Green Goddess (directed by Edward Kull) is set in Guatemala and, along with some rather out of place african animals seen in cut aways, contains the calls of a Laughing Kookaburra (Dacelo Novaeguineae) used to signify the dark and mysterious jungle, with all is psychological and racist, colonial connotations. Kookaburras are not found in Guatemala; they are only found in Australia and New Guinea, and even though the tale is a fantasy, it is interesting to note the use of such a sound in this context.

In each edition of this project I research the local birds to try and make sure that there will not be song that will be too similar to the current species there so as to affect the birds. Where possible I consult conservationists or organisations such as the Bird Protection League (Ligue pour la Protection des Oiseaux ) in France (There’s No Place Called Home, Jardin da la Psalette, 2016). Birds are extremely clever and would be able to detect the presence of an actual other bird through sight, movement, smell, as well as

There’s No Place Called Home in Guangzhou, China 2005.


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sound, and the playback of unidentifiable, incongruous bird sounds would be as irrelevant as cellphone and other sounds within those frequencies and phrases. This is a sonic trap for human audiences, not the local birds.

The project has been undertaken as an illegal intervention in public space as well as an arranged public art exhibition. Similarly, the work has been shown for as little as a few hours to permanent versions in Amman, Johannesburg, and Reims that run daily. The practical processes towards this piece begin with the choice of tree and bird for each installation. I look for large, leafy trees that can hide and support the weight of a speaker, and offer a way to run an audio cable to wherever I can safely store the technology for the artwork in a space that won’t be a visual distraction from the tree and the experience of the audio. The choice of bird is a more complex affair as it involves the type of species, its various sounds and vocal techniques, and both the name and symbolic, literary, and cultural references pertaining to that bird, as well as the recorded species’s own habits such as its diet, mating, and nesting.

These factors influence the reading of the image, for example in the 2005 edition staged along the Pearl River in Guangzhou (There’s No Place Called Home, Guangzhou), I used the harsh shriek-like calls of a Fiscal Shrike (Lanius collaris), a carnivorous species known for impaling its prey on thorns and barbed wire so as to dry the meat out. For the context of the installation, I selected this bird for what would be interpreted as a violent culinary practice. Another aspect of the process is the sourcing of the bird sounds. Where possible I record them myself, but the expertise and experience of established bird recordists and ornithologists is always sought. Here I have been lucky to have recordings given to me, or used through Creative Commons licences, and in some instances rented

There’s No Place Called Home, installation: speaker in tree is hidden from view.


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or bought. The recordist is credited in the exhibition’s contextual information, for example Fintan O’Brien’s recording of a Melodious Blackbird (Dives dives), recorded in Belize, and broadcast from the trees of the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in 2016 (There’s No Place Called Home (YSP)).

The piece is often monophonic–keeping with the economy of means in the idea–but multichannel versions have been made with the effect being that of many birds being heard in the area, like a large scale occupation of the site by a foreign species. Very little audio treatment is done to the recordings, other than noise reduction and EQ to bring a sense of dynamics to the sound. The recordings are sometimes edited for length to not make the piece appear too repetitive, and to have gaps of silence between various calls. The intention here is to make the audio appear as lifelike as possible, and the recordings are played at a level that would

seem “realistic.” My wish is that the recording hides in plain sight. Mixing on site with the speakers installed is one of the best pieces of advice I can give to installation artists, and this is vital for an artwork like this. Factors such as traffic and water noise from streams and rivers, as well as the way wind sounds through the trees based on the size of the leaves, can all affect the audial reception of the work.

Like with Prayer, I use simple, domestic technology: weatherproof, passive speakers and an amplifier, and for formal exhibitions I use an electricity timer to have the installation run autonomously. Camouflage netting, as found in hunting shops and military surplus stores, is used to disguise the speaker into the foliage. Whereas the concealing of the sound source references the acousmatic tradition, the reception of the audio is meant to appear to be unmistakably that of a bird, and more so that the bird is actually

There’s No Place Called Home, installation: speaker in tree is hidden from view.


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there in the tree. The location of the artwork is not disclosed, but in the case of formal exhibitions, mention is made of the general area that the work can be found. For those audience members who understand that there is a Gang-Gang Cockatoo (Callocephalon fimbriatum) somewhere in the vicinity, but might not know the specific call, every bird sound in the locale becomes loaded and suspect.

I think of both projects as being contextual and experiential, and therefore their documentation is challenging. I find writing about the pieces helps in distilling the ideas and translating them into a communicative form for a current and future audience to access. I try to tone the writing to be explanatory without being interpretive, wanting to allow the reader to personalise the piece for themselves.

Photographs are mandatory, especially in a contemporary art situation where these projects circulate through catalogues, Instagram feeds, critical reviews, and theoretical journals. The audio components are, strangely enough, the hardest part to transmit to a secondary audience. Prayer’s multi-channel features don’t document very well even in binaural recording, and There’s No Place Called Home’s dislocated birdsongs hide even deeper in field recordings of the intervention. For Prayer I make extracts of the individual prayers available online to be listened to with textual and photographic references. With There’s No Place Called Home I feel that the secondary audience can research the birdsong themselves

as to give them the audio would be too revealing for the artwork’s spirit of concealment. What makes site-specific sound work so appealing is that you and the audience need to be there.

By being restaged each time, both projects serve as strategies to engage with people, locations, and the dynamics of that moment in time; all of which pose new challenges. Prayer, with its confluence of local voices brought together, and There’s No Place Called Home with its sonic lure being presented outdoors in public space, make both artworks contingent, and thus each exhibition and iteration becomes a further chapter in their process and development.

Exhibition notices

• Prayer (Stockholm) runs at Historiska, Stockholm, until 16 November 2017.

• There’s No Place Called Home (New Orleans) is exhibited on “The Lotus in Spite of the Swamp,” the 4th Prospect Triennial of New Orleans, curated by Trevor Schoonmaker, opening on 18 November and running until 25 February 2018.

Acknowledgments Prayer

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Albin Hillervik, Anna Douglas, Anna Morris, Anthea Buys, Elisabeth Millqvist, Gemma Thomas, Harun Morrison, Helene Larsson Pousette, IASPIS, Jigisha Patel, Maiken Vibe Bauer, Mattias Givell, Matti Sumari, Monique Mossefinn, Edi Muka, Neil Walker, Nicola Lowery, Laura McDermott, Pauline Theart, Ruth Gamble, Susanna Zidén, and Zayd Minty for their assistance in the networking and creation of


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this project. And most of all, a very special thank you to the people who have shared their prayers through being recorded.

Prayer has been exhibited at One City Many, Cultures, Cape Town (2000), Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town (2004), Huddersfield Art Gallery, Huddersfield (2008), Lakeside Arts Centre, Nottingham (2010), Stiftelsen 3,14, Bergen (2010), My World Images, Copenhagen (2010), Fierce Festival, Birmingham (2011), Johannesburg Art Gallery, Johannesburg (2012), Wanås Konst, Hässleholm (2015), Malmös Leende, Malmö (2016), and Historiska, Stockholm (2016).

There’s No Place Called Home has been exhibited in various locations including Kitakyushu (2004), Guangzhou (2005), Johannesburg (2006), Marrakech (2009), Amman (2011), London (2012), Havana (2015), the Yorkshire Sculpture Park (2016), and Riga (2017).

References

Anatolia News Agency (2013). Sweden allows call to prayer from Stockholm minaret. Available from http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/sweden-allows-call-to-prayer-from-stockholm-minaret.aspx?PageID=238&NID=41669&NewsCatID=351 [Accessed: 16 Sept 2017]

Attali, Jacques (1977). Noise: The Political Economy of Music. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press

LaBelle, Brandon (2015). The Precarious Body: James Webb’s Xenagogue. In: Buys. A (ed), Xenagogue. Bergen: Hordaland Kunstsenter

Image credits: author unless otherwise mentioned.

> end of article <

© JAMes webb, 2017. All righTs reserved.


41 rue Mazarine, 75006 Paris, France • +33 1 46 33 13 13 • [email protected] • www.imanefares.com • du mardi au samedi de 11h à 19h

Hope is a good swimmer

James Webb

Exposition du 8 décembre 2016 au 11 février 2017

All that is unknown, 2016Courtesy de l’artiste et Galerie Imane Farès

La Galerie Imane Farès présente Hope is a good swimmer, la première exposition personnelle de James Webb.

L’été dernier, James Webb présentait La Syzygie dans l’intégralité des espaces publics du Théâtre Graslin à Nantes1. En souhaitant « sonder l’âme du bâtiment », l’artiste a créé un parcours sonore com‑posé de sons enregistrés dans l’édifice ‑ accords des instruments, répétitions des chanteurs, silence noc‑turne ‑ et d’entretiens réalisés avec des experts2 livrant leur point de vue sur l’architecture du lieu. Ce scénario aux multiples visages révèle chez James Webb la volonté de transmettre et transcender l’hé‑ritage d’un patrimoine afin d’assembler les frag‑ments d’une histoire qui s’évapore comme un rêve.

On reconnaît dans les situations et les images com‑posées par James Webb une écriture avec laquelle le voyage est une immersion faite d’ellipses et de déplacements. Parfois étranges, ces œuvres se posent comme des énigmes qu’il faut tenter de décrypter. Dans sa pratique, le son est à l’identique d’un corps avec lequel les traditions, les croyances et leurs modes de communication caractérisent un enjeu majeur pour comprendre les clés d’une société. L’aventure se poursuit pour le visiteur car l’œuvre est habitée par sa présence. En effet, Webb encourage le public à s’abandonner dans l’épaisseur du son et de ses vibrations afin de percer la frontière sensible entre le réel et l’imaginaire.

Artiste incontournable de la scène sud‑africaine, James Webb questionne nos processus de pensées et le raisonnement social et identitaire de l’individu. Hope is a good swimmer résonne comme un état de conscience à chercher dans l’ici et maintenant. Dans cet horizon que l’on fantasme ou que l’on vit, la transmission d’une culture, le mouvement collectif et le soulèvement spirituel conditionnent l’être humain et façonnent les murs d’une société.

Créée en 2014, Al Madat est composée de quatre tapis et de l’enregistrement d’un dhikr soufi, chanté par les patients du Centre de désintoxication Sultan Bahu de Westdridge3 (Capetown). Le dhikr, littéra‑lement « souvenir », est une récitation islamique où des noms sacrés sont chantés. Ici, la répétition des mots se déploie avec frénésie parmi les voix d’un groupe de soixante personnes. Proche de l’invoca‑tion, Al Madat4 constitue l’appel d’un mouvement

Hope is a good swimmer, 2017

Al Madat, 2014, Courtesy de l’artiste et Galerie Imane Farès

1 Cette pièce a été présentée au Théâtre Graslin dans le cadre du Voyage à Nantes, 1er juillet-28 août, 20162 Dans le cadre de ce projet, James Webb a interviewé un architecte, un astrologue, un historien, un régisseur, un médium et un psychologue3 Commencé par Shafiek Davids, en 2005, ce centre de désintoxication est, un organisme à but non lucratif traitant, la toxicomanie et plus principalement, l’héroïne et la méthamphétamine, dans les quartiers de Michell’s Plain, et Bonteheuwel

à Capetown. Le centre, fonctionne en offrant un programme, journalier intensif sur six semaines. Sultan BAHU (1628 - 1691) était un érudit, islamique, poète et un saint soufi, fondateur, de l’odre soufi Sawari Qadiri.4 Al Madat se traduit par « aide »5 Une référence au Choros présent dans la tragédie antique 6 Zami Mdingi est auteure, compositrice et interprète sud-africaine, basée à Cape Town.

collectif luttant contre l’addiction à travers un pas‑sage à l’acte orienté vers la religion. Le contexte d’Al Madat expose le besoin d’échapper au réel et à la violence vécue au quotidien. À la lisière de la cathar‑sis et du tragique, cette fresque sonore dépeint un chœur5 qui se métamorphose pendant la séance, arguant les mêmes mots et les mêmes gestes. Ainsi, la religion et ses rites ouvrent un espace‑temps dans lequel Dieu incarne le remède pour être délivré.

Si l’on se tourne vers All That is Unknown, le temps se meut face à la caresse d’un échange entre les bat‑tements de deux cœurs qui se font face. Diffusés avec deux haut‑parleurs à intervalles réguliers, les battements de cœurs communiquent sans se voir, suggérant la complicité entre deux corps toujours présents mais l’oeil ne les voit pas. Amoureux, enne‑mis ou étrangers, ils sondent un mystère qui nous échappe.

L’humour accompagne souvent le travail de James Webb. Dans une vidéo datée de 2005, intitulée Saturday night can be the loneliest place on earth, un plan fixe présente le parking de stationnement public d’un parc d’attraction situé à Kitakyushu au Japon. Le paysage de ce samedi soir totalement vide ne laisse présager aucune foule dans les allées du parc. Seule la musique diffusée par le haut parleur vient animer l’endroit. Créé en 1990 par Nippon Steel sur le modèle du parc américain, Space World appartient à ces lieux de loisirs qui cherchent à développer le tourisme avec des attractions phéno‑ménales nourries de science‑fiction. Dans cet univers de désolation, moins excitant qu’une aire d’autoroute au cœur du Nevada, une

transmission ionosphérique de huit secondes vient perturber la musique et le système sonore du par‑king. Dans cette œuvre titrée avec ironie, le samedi soir peut devenir un désert de solitude sauf pour ceux qui, présents et conscients, pourraient recevoir un message des confins de l’espace.

Derrière le regard de l’artiste, on reconnaît la pos‑ture du chercheur. James Webb fouille et se docu‑mente mais peu d’éléments factuels apparaissent dans l’ensemble de ses pièces. L’essentiel est de transmettre un processus d’écriture qui se réinvente avec le spectateur. Il découvre une histoire sous un autre regard, il déambule dans un lieu avec une autre musique.

Dans Threnody (2016), le voyage est un souffle qui se vit de l’intérieur réveillant les traces, les souvenirs et notre mémoire. La voix dans Helker Skelter (The Beatles, 1968) a été isolée puis inversée afin d’être donnée à chanter à Zami Mdingi6. Diffusée dans un haut‑parleur en référence au Cercle noir de Kazimir Malevitch (1915), la voix bascule vers le changement et transcende une musique qui devient plus spiri‑tuelle, un réveil plus proche de la conjuration et de la glossolalie.

James Webb oriente notre réflexion sur la notion d’espoir à travers notre relation au temps, au spiri‑tuel et à l’autre. La perception des éléments se pré‑cise, le quotidien révèle d’autres couleurs et des sons inattendus se détachent. Il s’agit ici d’une confession intime qui s’adresse à chacun d’entre nous sur le passage kinesthésique à éprouver dans un espace en haute tension avec le son.

Hope is a good swimmer se présente comme une tra‑versée poétique. L’exposition est écrite comme une odyssée où malgré les naufrages et les tempêtes, le nageur continue d’approcher une mer moins agitée. James Webb nous montre que l’espoir est plus qu’une image ou un sentiment. L’espoir devient ce guide qui nous accompagne avec sa respiration et ses muscles vers l’horizon.

Al Madat, 2014, Courtesy de l’artiste et Galerie Imane Farès

1 Cette pièce a été présentée au Théâtre Graslin dans le cadre du Voyage à Nantes, 1er juillet-28 août, 20162 Dans le cadre de ce projet, James Webb a interviewé un architecte, un astrologue, un historien, un régisseur, un médium et un psychologue3 Commencé par Shafiek Davids, en 2005, ce centre de désintoxication est, un organisme à but non lucratif traitant, la toxicomanie et plus principalement, l’héroïne et la méthamphétamine, dans les quartiers de Michell’s Plain, et Bonteheuwel

à Capetown. Le centre, fonctionne en offrant un programme, journalier intensif sur six semaines. Sultan BAHU (1628 - 1691) était un érudit, islamique, poète et un saint soufi, fondateur, de l’odre soufi Sawari Qadiri.4 Al Madat se traduit par « aide »5 Une référence au Choros présent dans la tragédie antique 6 Zami Mdingi est auteure, compositrice et interprète sud-africaine, basée à Cape Town.

collectif luttant contre l’addiction à travers un pas‑sage à l’acte orienté vers la religion. Le contexte d’Al Madat expose le besoin d’échapper au réel et à la violence vécue au quotidien. À la lisière de la cathar‑sis et du tragique, cette fresque sonore dépeint un chœur5 qui se métamorphose pendant la séance, arguant les mêmes mots et les mêmes gestes. Ainsi, la religion et ses rites ouvrent un espace‑temps dans lequel Dieu incarne le remède pour être délivré.

Si l’on se tourne vers All That is Unknown, le temps se meut face à la caresse d’un échange entre les bat‑tements de deux cœurs qui se font face. Diffusés avec deux haut‑parleurs à intervalles réguliers, les battements de cœurs communiquent sans se voir, suggérant la complicité entre deux corps toujours présents mais l’oeil ne les voit pas. Amoureux, enne‑mis ou étrangers, ils sondent un mystère qui nous échappe.

L’humour accompagne souvent le travail de James Webb. Dans une vidéo datée de 2005, intitulée Saturday night can be the loneliest place on earth, un plan fixe présente le parking de stationnement public d’un parc d’attraction situé à Kitakyushu au Japon. Le paysage de ce samedi soir totalement vide ne laisse présager aucune foule dans les allées du parc. Seule la musique diffusée par le haut parleur vient animer l’endroit. Créé en 1990 par Nippon Steel sur le modèle du parc américain, Space World appartient à ces lieux de loisirs qui cherchent à développer le tourisme avec des attractions phéno‑ménales nourries de science‑fiction. Dans cet univers de désolation, moins excitant qu’une aire d’autoroute au cœur du Nevada, une

transmission ionosphérique de huit secondes vient perturber la musique et le système sonore du par‑king. Dans cette œuvre titrée avec ironie, le samedi soir peut devenir un désert de solitude sauf pour ceux qui, présents et conscients, pourraient recevoir un message des confins de l’espace.

Derrière le regard de l’artiste, on reconnaît la pos‑ture du chercheur. James Webb fouille et se docu‑mente mais peu d’éléments factuels apparaissent dans l’ensemble de ses pièces. L’essentiel est de transmettre un processus d’écriture qui se réinvente avec le spectateur. Il découvre une histoire sous un autre regard, il déambule dans un lieu avec une autre musique.

Dans Threnody (2016), le voyage est un souffle qui se vit de l’intérieur réveillant les traces, les souvenirs et notre mémoire. La voix dans Helker Skelter (The Beatles, 1968) a été isolée puis inversée afin d’être donnée à chanter à Zami Mdingi6. Diffusée dans un haut‑parleur en référence au Cercle noir de Kazimir Malevitch (1915), la voix bascule vers le changement et transcende une musique qui devient plus spiri‑tuelle, un réveil plus proche de la conjuration et de la glossolalie.

James Webb oriente notre réflexion sur la notion d’espoir à travers notre relation au temps, au spiri‑tuel et à l’autre. La perception des éléments se pré‑cise, le quotidien révèle d’autres couleurs et des sons inattendus se détachent. Il s’agit ici d’une confession intime qui s’adresse à chacun d’entre nous sur le passage kinesthésique à éprouver dans un espace en haute tension avec le son.

Hope is a good swimmer se présente comme une tra‑versée poétique. L’exposition est écrite comme une odyssée où malgré les naufrages et les tempêtes, le nageur continue d’approcher une mer moins agitée. James Webb nous montre que l’espoir est plus qu’une image ou un sentiment. L’espoir devient ce guide qui nous accompagne avec sa respiration et ses muscles vers l’horizon.

Hope is a good swimmer, 2017

1 This piece was presented at the Théâtre Graslin as part of Voyage à Nantes (2016), 1st July to 28 August 2016.2 As part of this project, James Webb interviewed an architect an astrologer a historian, a stage manager, a psychologist and a medium3 Started by Shafiek Davids in 2005, the Sultan Bahu Centre is a non-profit organisation in the field of substance abuse – mainly heroin and methamphetamine (tik) – in both Mitchell’s Plain and Bonteheuwel in Cape Town. The centre operates as a

drug treatment facility in lower socio-economic communities, offering a six-week intensive day programme with continual care thereafter. Sultan Bahu (1628 – 1691) was an Islamic scholar, poet and Sufi saint, founder of the Sawari Qadiri Sufi Order.4 Al Madat can be translated to : “Help”5 A chorus in the context of Ancient Greek tragedy6 Zami Mdingi is an author, composer and vocalist from South Africa, based in Cape Town.

Galerie Imane Farès presents, Hope is a good swim-mer, James Webb’s latest solo exhibition, compri‑sing new works displayed for the first time in France.

Last summer, James Webb presented La Syzygie throughout the public areas of the Théâtre Graslin in Nantes1. Hoping to “probe the building’s soul,” Webb created a sonic itinerary composed of sounds recorded everywhere in the building (instruments being tuned, singers rehearsing, nocturnal silence...) and interviews with experts2 offering their point of view on the venue’s architecture. This scenario, with its multiples faces, reveals James Webb’s desire to both transmit and transcend a given site’s heritage. By doing so, he assembles the fragments of an eva‑porating history, as if it were a dream.

Webb’s situations and images, reveal a form of wri‑ting where travel is seen as an immersion filled with ellipses and displacements. These occasionally strange works arise like enigmas, demanding to be decrypted. In his practice, sound acts like a body with which traditions and beliefs, as well as their modes of communication, define the keys to understanding a society. This adventure continues for the audience, since the work is inhabited by their presence. Indeed, Webb encourages the public to surrender to the thickness of sound and its vibra‑tions as a means to breaking through the sensory border between reality and the imaginary.

This significant South African artist questions our thought processes, our identity as individuals, and our rationale as social beings. Hope is a good swim-mer resounds like a state of consciousness that can only be found in the here and now. In this horizon

– be it fantasy or the reality in which we live – the transmission of culture, of a collective movement, and of spiritual uprising… all these things condition human beings and shape the structure of a society.

Created in 2014, Al Madat is composed of four Karachi carpets and a recording of a Sufi dhikr chanted by patients at the Sultan Bahu Rehab Centre in Westridge3 (Cape Town). A dhikr (literally, “remembrance”) is an Islamic recitation where sacred names are chanted. In this case, the repeated words are energetically charged among the sixty men making up the group. Not unlike an invocation, Al Madat4 is the call of a collective movement to fight addiction and take religious action. The context of Al Madat exposes the need to transcend from the harsh reality and violence of everyday life. At the limit of catharsis and tragedy, this sonic immersion features a chorus5 transforming throughout a recital as the individual members constantly assert the same words and gestures. Here, religion and its rites open up a space‑time where God becomes deliverance.

If we turn to All that is unknown, time flies to the caressing exchange of two hearts beating across a room from one another. Played over two speakers at regular intervals, the heartbeats communicate wit‑hout seeing each other, suggesting a bond between two bodies that are always present yet unseen by the eye. Whether they are lovers, enemies, or stran‑gers, they delve into a mystery that escapes us. Humour often accompanies James Webb’s work. In a video dating back to 2005, entitled Saturday Night Can Be the Loneliest Place on Earth, a static camera films the empty parking lot of a Japanese

theme park in Kitakyushu. The only life to be found here comes from the music drifting out of the par‑king lot PA system. Created in 1990 by Nippon Steel, and emulating the template of an American theme park, Space World belongs to that brand of recreational venue that has attempted to develop tourism with phenomenal, sci‑fi inspired rides.

In this desolate universe – which looks less exciting than a rest stop on a highway in Nevada – an eight‑second long ionospheric transmission disrupts the music playing out of the parking lot PA system. With its ironic title, Saturday night is shown to be a poten‑tial desert of solitude, but for those who are present and aware they might be able to receive a message from the outer limits of space.

Through the artist’s approach, we can also feel the presence of a seeker and researcher. James Webb excavates and gathers up material, but conclusive elements are not readily offered. The most impor‑tant aspect is the creation of a creative environment, which allows the spectator to respond. They disco‑ver a given history with a new perspective; discove‑ring new spaces with an alternative soundtrack. Here and now, the body follows closely a sound, perhaps a word, or just a noise, to be finally projec‑ted into the infinite unknown.

In Threnody (2016), the journey takes the form of a breath experienced from the inside, reawakening traces, lost thoughts, and our memory. The vocal track of Helter Skelter (The Beatles, 1968) was iso‑lated, reversed, and then given to singer Zami Mdingi6 to perform. Played from a circular, black speaker – which also acts as a reference to Kazimir

Malevich’s 1915 work, Black Circle – the voice changes and transcends into an increasingly spiri‑tual form of music, then morphs into a hymn, before finally resembling a conjuration, or someone spea‑king in tongues.

Saturday Night Can Be The Loneliest Place On Earth, 2004, Courtesy de l’artiste et Galerie Imane Farès

James Webb invites us to reflect upon the notion of hope through our relationship to time, to all things spiritual, and to the Other. Our perception of dif‑ferent elements begins to take shape, and everyday life reveals other colours, while unexpected sounds shift to the foreground. This can feel like an intimate

engagement, addressed to each of us, within a kinaesthetic journey, experienced in a space that is highly charged with sound.

Hope is a good swimmer serves as a spirited crossing. It presents itself as an odyssey where despite all the shipwrecks and sea changes, the swimmer conti‑nues throughout. James Webb shows us that hope is the guide, the breath, the muscles moving toge‑ther, the determination to meet the horizon.

Mehdi Brit, 2016

ARTFORUM, 2016

226

PORTFOLIO

JAMES WEBBÀ l’écoute du monde

James Webb est né en 1975 à Kimberley en Afrique du Sud. Aujourd’hui il vit et travaille à Cape Town et fait figure de pionnier dans son pays en matière d’art sonore. Il intervient dans les galeries comme dans les espaces publics et parvient à détourner le spectateur pour le rendre avant tout auditeur.

Par Camille Moulonguet Crédits photos : Bjorn Mortensen courtesy James Webb, Galerie Imane Farès.

Afrikadaa, 2016

227

L’artiste raconte qu’aussi loin qu’il puisse

se souvenir son intérêt pour le son. Il a com-

mencé avec un lecteur de cassette gagné par

son père dans un tournoi de golf.

« Lorsque j’écoute à nouveau ces cassettes,

je suis saisi par ma manière de parler lorsque

j’avais 4 ans et touché par la jeune voix de mon

père. Je traitais le magnétophone comme un

être sensible, je m’adressais à lui par son nom

et lui posait des questions. » Et puis plus tard,

les mixtapes de son adolescence participent

aussi à sa prédilection pour le médium sonore.

Ce rapport physique au son, à la machine

est très présent dans son travail.

Tout se passe comme si le son devient

tangible aussi bien dans ses installations que

dans ses compositions. Il y a des enceintes,

des appareils, des branchements et des

fils ostensibles, le son et son appareillage

s’imbriquent pour créer une œuvre.

Son œuvre « Prayer » qui date de 2012,

exprime particulièrement bien la manière

dont le canal et le son s’équilibrent dans son

travail. Cette installation diffuse simultané-

ment, les enregistrements des prières de

toutes les religions présentes dans la ville où

elle est exposée. Des haut-parleurs sont

disposés sur un tapis et le public peut se

promener librement à travers l'installation.

L'écoute se fait à la fois de la polyphonie des

voix de tous les haut-parleurs en même

temps et aussi individuellement en se mettant

à genoux pour écouter une prière en

particulier.

James Webb explique que « le projet

est créé in situ chaque fois, et les prières

sont recueillies auprès de tous les différents

groupes religieux opérant dans la ville hôte. »

James Webb aime rapprocher, voire juxta-

poser des mondes éloignés ou qui s’ignorent

délibérément. Cette manière de réunir des

228

temporalités, des lieux, des esprits, caracté-

rise on travail dont le son en est le principal

vecteur. L’immatérialité qui lui est propre doit

certainement permettre

ces rencontres, ces glissements.

Cette disposition de brouiller le spectateur

est présente aussi dans son installation

« There’s no place called home » qu’il a présenté

à Dresde en 2015 et dont il a initié l’itinérance

en 2004. Il place par exemple dans un parc

japonais des enregistrements de sons

d’oiseaux enregistrés en Afrique du Sud.

Il glisse ainsi imperceptiblement

l’impossible dans le « vrai monde » et déconte-

nance d’un coup notre perception du monde.

James Webb théâtralise en quelque sorte

le son à l’aide de champs très différents aussi

bien littéraires que cinématographiques ou

encore dans un de ses derniers travaux,

la voyance. Ce travail, montré au Palais de

Tokyo en 2011 par Rahma Khazam dans le

cadre de « répondeur », met en scène la voix

d’un acteur aux intonations d’Orson Welles qui

délivre les mots recueillis

« de profundis » par le voyant. On boit les

paroles d’un Orson Welles autoritaire et

cynique, plus vrai que nature !

Les incohérences spatio-temporelles de

James Webb se jouent du réel et créent ce

moment d’incertitude qui fait que d’un seul

coup, tout est dans tout …

On ne sait plus à quel saint se vouer, ni

dans quel état on erre et si les morts sont

vivants.

Afrikadaa, 2016

229

Afrikadaa, 2015-2016

Afrikadaa, Spiritual resonances, 2015-2016

Xenagogue, Hordaland Kunstsenter, 2015

Brandon LaBelle - 2015The Precarious Body – James Webb’s « Xenagogue»

There appears that creeping feeling of loss, of transience and fragility, and which is given points of reference and contact through an array of resonances, vibrations, echoes – joys and ecstasies, the abandoned. From the slow diffusion of a voice as it teeters on the edge of madness, or that voice – an unforgettable voice – that reverberates, alone and without, through the halls of a closed down building, to the flickering of a light, which drums out silently a message in Morse code to the city around, there is that creeping feeling of loss, which persists. And which becomes tenacious, mischievous, transgressive.

The works of James Webb circulate around a complex mixture of emotional and affective states; of longing and despair, of the ecstatic and of hopefulness, states of bodies and minds that move throughout his practice to raise questions of individuality and community, belonging and displacement, fragmentation and recuperation. Webb consistently and methodically captures a multitude of figures and forms – bodies, and especially voices of contemporary existence at their most tenuous. Yet what he reveals, through acts of recording and of transmitting, is how such tenuousness is often so profound. Subsequently, that feeling of loss becomes operative, captured as a moment of suspense in which anything can still happen and from which new meanings are possible.

The works of James Webb lead us closer to those who search for faith: faith in themselves and in others, faith in spirits or what may still be found within the folds of history, and importantly, faith in the very act of hearing, sensing, becoming. Through acts of fieldwork, documentary capture, fictions and stagings, translations, and interpretations, Webb asks us to perceive those edges where noise and silence, appearance and disappearance, fragmentation and renewal meet. We may suddenly hear the song of a bird far from home, or the signals that announce the possibility of impending disaster, and maybe even a woman’s voice remembering her own youth captured in song. We may hear these things, and in doing so we also hear the very conditions of dislocation and displacement, longing. Contemporary existence at its most tenuous, and the figures that persevere and that search, especially.

The pervasive and ultimately defining conditions of dislocation and displacement are certainly part of the legacy of our modern culture; without the mass movement of peoples from continent to continent, modernity would somehow not be very modern. And this modernity continues today, though within the geopolitical dynamics of financial capitalism, and the steady unstoppable flood of related wars, which sees an intensification of the expelled and the dispossessed, those without. As a recent United Nations report indicates, the movements of refugees and asylum seekers today must be seen as indicators of a “world in crisis.”

Such displacement is mirrored by a more affluent or privileged sense of mobility central to contemporary global life in which flexible labor and networked culture affords, if not requires, that one be everywhere. In this sense, the world in crisis is to be seen less as an exceptional state, and more as a new reality. A reality that, in turn, seems to demand greater critical engagement.

In Berlin, for example, this can be seen through a number of initiatives and grass roots movements, one in particular, on the topic of ‘re-communalization’. In support of affordable housing, re-communalization has become a platform for lobbying for new local housing policy, which immigrant communities, in particular, are susceptible to. The precarity of one’s home, and that sense of impending displacement, becomes a deep thread, and one that has ignited neighbourhood discussions and demonstrations as well as forms of urgent occupation. From refugees taking over an abandoned school in Kreuzberg to the construction of a shelter on Kottbusser Tor, now known under the broader heading of Kotti & Co., displacement and dislocation are issues – or states of living – which drive news types of civic mindfulness, as well as produce a new geopolitical sensibility: new forms of vocalization and of listening.

It is such audible intensities that I equally detect in Webb’s works, and which tune us to the precarity of those bodies that move, flee, search, and that produce openings for survival as well as unlikely joy. The displaced, the dislocated, and the migratory, the hopeful and the tenacious. These, I would suggest, underpin Webb’s activities: of seeking out specific voices found in cities around the world. These voices are in themselves moving; whether lifted up by a belief in the beyond, or broken down by the weight of the world, I cannot turn away from such voices and their expressions. They are textured by intensity, and a sense of withdrawal as well as surprising energy; they edge up on a threshold where the world may disappear, or come crashing in all the more. Webb captures these voices as found within so many hidden rooms, behind the scenes, in situations of private gathering – his is a practice focused on the overlooked and the underheard, or rather, the never heard before: a secret voice. And yet which is deeply present, increasingly, within contemporary life. The displaced, the dislocated, and the migratory. Or, simply, the precarious.

The works prepared and produced for his exhibition at Hordaland Kunstsenter (HKS) deliver a thoughtful assembly of such voices. A version of the artist’s ongoing work There’s No Place Called Home (2004 -) installed outside the art centre in a nearby tree, already welcomes us into this assembly, though here we may be surprised by what we hear – not human voices, but rather the song of a bird, yet a bird that specifically does not belong. Here, Webb mischievously dislocates any environmentally stable view by smuggling into our soundscape a bird out of place.

Through such acoustical sleight-of-hand, Webb gently brings into question the order of this place, shifting the borders of inclusion and exclusion to allow for another possible territory of relation.

This bird we might appreciate as a type of migrant: did this small creature get lost along the way, perhaps? Or might this bird have needed to make a desperate escape from a war- torn locale? Or simply got distracted by the song of another? The narrative remains mysterious, and yet unmistakably present: somewhere something happened – which delivered this foreigner to Bergen.

The displaced and the dislocated, the migrant and also, the foreigner: such are the figures – or trajectories of engagement – that circulate through Webb’s practice, and which appear at HKS, assembled to form frictions of belonging and discord, as well as surprising melody and uplifting togetherness. The displaced bird we hear just outside finds an echo within, in the work Al Madat (2014). Installed as a central piece within the gallery, Al Madat appears as a set of four standing loudspeakers, and complemented with carpets placed on the floor where visitors are invited to sit surrounded by the speakers. In this sense, we enter a scene; we take up a position – we attend to the voices soon to come. Al Madat is essentially a recording Webb made at a drug rehabilitation centre in Cape Town. Affiliated with the Sultan Bahu Centre in Johannesburg, the rehab centre assists recovering addicts. As part of their program, groups are led in dhikr chants, traditional chants employing special breathing techniques and focused on the repetition of short phrases of devotion. Webb recorded one such session at the rehab centre, in this case, a group of patients whose collective vocalization calls to the Prophet Mohammed for help.

Supplicating and surrendering, the heavy guttural vocalization builds into a deep block of sound – we can almost feel the weight of the bodies, as they heave themselves into this vertiginous process. Carried along, in the current of chant. The absence of the face and of any visual reference that might open a view onto who these bodies are specifically – how clearly we rely upon visual signs when entering into identity –, such vacancy, such withdrawal only acts to intensify the presence of these voices. Voices searching, gathering together to find strength and that channel themselves toward divination, on the way toward another journey. I would say these voices negotiate their own physicality, the bodies that anchor them to terrestrial struggles, in need of help, and that lose themselves (or find themselves) in the collective intensity of this euphoric moment.

Between There’s no place called home and Al Madat there hovers the question of displacement, of the migrant and the foreign, the beyond, yet also the physical and the metaphysical, and where and how one may find new passion. In leaving behind the familiar and the local, that space of belonging, migration is fundamentally an act of projection, flight, a trajectory whose endpoint is by nature suspended, unclear, beyond. One is always imagining the possibility of what may come, whether for good or bad, hopeful or desolate.- In this sense, I’m interested to consider Webb’s voices as hovering between hope and despair, emplacement and transience; they in fact reveal to us this state of in-betweeness, a becoming-other. A being-on-the-way. With and without, at the same instant.

This finds additional expression in the two new works presented: Imaginary Appetites and This is my voice but these are not my words (both 2015). The first immerses us in a delirious flow of noise, with small radios constantly panning through frequencies, and amplified within a small thicket of Delicious Monster plants that loom around us. Suddenly, as we enter the building we are lost in this maze of static, of fragments and constant movement, of murmuring voices and interrupting signals, in which our senses are captured, disoriented. This disorientation finds a parallel in This is my voice…, a piece located in the dark cellar of the gallery. Here, we leave behind the dizzying field of monster plants and their radiophonic excess; we leave behind the chanting vocalizations that fill the gallery with breath, lung, and a force of collective oral intensity. Instead, we enter a condensed and hallucinatory space of articulation: a single voice reading over texts written by invited artists, which describe specific images provided by Webb. Images of the uncanny and the strange, of excess and the unlikely, images that unsettle our gaze with a poetics of the grotesque. Yet, these texts produced in response do not merely describe. Rather they meditate, associating these images with a range of speculations – in short, they digress, they search, and in so doing lead the voice, this single voice, into an arena of shifting meanings, translations, fragments. Narratives of becoming that ultimately suffuse the darkness with a surprising glow.

Both these works locate us further within territories of precarious vocalization, of transmission and dislocation, ecstasy and even madness – the edges where silence and noise, appearance and disappearance, fragmentation and renewal, meet. Whether lost in a garden of scattered messages, or immersed within a darkness full of unhinged significations, we become foreigners to ourselves.

Such a view finds resonance in the theme of the xenagogue itself, to which the exhibition is dedicated – this figure of the guide, the one who leads the way, who traverses and travels, and who takes flight; who is familiar with the unfamiliar. The xenagogue is a type of beacon from which others find direction. In this regard it is a figure of loss, and also of hope. The xenagogue might not necessarily know the exact pathway, or even all that may lie in wait along the way; instead, the xenagogue only knows the experience of having been elsewhere. It is a figure of transience, the very embodiment of the migrant, who in the midst of a continual displacement fights for a new form of belonging. In other words, it is the one who already knows that displacement and dislocation are central to contemporary existence, and form the project of global identity. What we hear in James Webb’s exhibition is such existence as it tries to vocalize, recorded and amplified through four materializations of foreign sound, to remind us of the precarious, rich and tenacious bodies that we are.

James Webb

James Webb explore la nature même de la croyance dans une dynamique de transmission

innovante tout en faisant appel à notre capacité d’émerveillement. Pour cela il utilise tant

l’humour que le détournement de technologies les plus courantes et développe de façon

stratégique son vocabulaire artistique en fonction des situations où il est amené à travailler.

James Webb a participé à la 9ème Biennale d’Art Contemporain de Lyon, à la 3ème biennale

de Marrakech, ainsi qu’à la dernière Biennale de Venise. Il est intervenu au Domaine de

Pommery, au Palais de Tokyo avec une pièce téléphonique1, ainsi qu’à la galerie Imane

Farès pour le projet « No Limit » en 2012. Au cours de différentes résidences comme,

celle notamment de Darat al Funun2 à Amman, il a réalisé plusieurs œuvres publiques.

Sa dernière commande est un guide audio pour un cimetière à Stockholm3. Depuis

plusieurs années, il constitue une archive sonore d’incantations interconfessionnelles

dans le monde entier et se meut entre langues et croyances en réponse à son enfance

marquée par l’apogée et fin de l’Apartheid.

Pluridisciplinaire, James Webb privilégie les formes les plus immatérielles comme le son,

la lumière ou la connectivité en modifiant la fonctionnalité ou la réceptivité des lieux où

il intervient, comme ici avec l’œuvre «Spectre». Que ce soit à la Johannesburg Art Gallery

où il a été invité dans l’ensemble de l’institution ou dans un parc au Japon « il peut

théâtraliser la lumière et le son, jusqu’à ce qu’ils évoquent aussi leurs propres dysfonctionne-

ments,” souligne Sean O’Toole un des premiers critiques d’Afrique du Sud à écrire sur

son travail. James Webb associe avec aisance la fiction avec le théâtre, jusqu’à nous

amener à penser que même si apparemment un espace parait avoir une fonction propre,

tout est réversible. Comme il le souligne: « Je suis fasciné par la dynamique de la croyance,

pas seulement au sens religieux et social, mais aussi au niveau de son histoire artistique et

économique. Je n’ai jamais étudié l’art ou la musique, à la place, j’ai fait des études de Théâtre,

Religions Comparées et Copyright. Ces trois sujets, associés à mon appétit pour le cinéma

et la musique expérimentale, sont les clés de ma pratique artistique ».

L’œuvre vidéo intitulée “Le Marché Oriental”, a consisté à inviter un Imam4 à chanter

l’appel à la prière dans ce qui reste d’un bâtiment datant de l’époque de l’Apartheid

transformé en marché, dit Oriental Plaza, avant sa destruction et transformation en

appartements de luxe. Cette œuvre d’une courte durée place le spectateur à l’intérieur

de cet espace voué à destruction, baigné dans une douceur parfaite et inquiétante, celle

ici de la résistance qui résonne de toutes les injustices imposées et subies. La personne

qui récite l’Adhan n’est jamais divulguée, l’absence a outrepassé le quotidien dont ces

images en mouvement presque diaphanes apportent une dimension spirituelle avant

l’éradication de toute trace de cette période sombre de l’Afrique du Sud.

James Webb parle de son intérêt pour la croyance qui a plus à voir avec « notre position

dans l’univers et comment on choisit de donner un certain pouvoir aux choses ou non ».

C’est ce qui me permet d’introduire ici le travail “Know Thy Worth” qui parle de la valeur

qu’on veut se donner à soi-même. Cet ancien adage replace de façon quelque peu

cynique l’idée du capitalisme et comment on s’auto valorise. Cet aphorisme grec

“Connais-toi toi-même” ornait l’entrée de l’oracle de Delphe qui était le domaine de

la Pythie, la prêtresse, qu’on consultait derrière un voile. Ici compris comme une référence

à la soustraction de la représentation, une voix désincarnée dont les associations ésotériques

sont toujours très prisées. Ce Modus Operandi spécifiquement calligraphié5 évoque

l’idée de la finance et de l’estime de soi, une métaphore spéculative comme pour nous

amener à être dans un état de veille et de réceptivité particulière et permanente.

1. https://soundcloud.com/theotherjameswebb2. http://www.daratalfunun.org/3. Le cimetière de Skogskyrkogården à Stockholm : www.letmelosemyself.com4. Sheikh Mogamat Moerat de la mosquée du quartier de Six’ Zeenatu Islam Majid 5. La calligraphie de cette œuvre a été réalisée par Mohammed Abu Aziz, un des calligraphes les plus

réputés de Jordanie.

James Webb, Le Marché Oriental, 2008/9. Vidéo, audio - 3 min. Édition de 5 + 2 EACourtesy de l’artiste et Imane Farès

DEPLIANT_Nous_BAT.indd 6 23/12/14 23:51

Nous, Galerie Imane Farès, 2015

James Webb explores the nature of belief through

dynamic and innovative modes of transmission, all

the while summoning the viewer’s capacity for wonder.

In order to achieve this, he employs humour, diverts

the usage of common technologies, and strategically

develops his artistic vocabulary in accordance with

each situation he works in.

James Webb has participated in the 9th Lyon Biennale,

the 3rd Marrakech Biennale, as well as in the recent

Venice Biennale. He has presented projects at Domaine

Pommery, a telephonic intervention1 at the Palais de

Tokyo, and took part in the exhibition “No Limit” at

Galerie Imane Farès in 2012. During various residencies

(like at the Darat al Funun2 in Amman), he has worked

on projects in the public sphere. His latest commission

was an audio guide for a cemetery in Stockholm3. For

several years, he has been compiling a worldwide audio

archive of interfaith prayers. Significantly he works

between languages and beliefs in a response to his

childhood, which was marked by the height and the

end of apartheid.

In a multidisciplinary way, James Webb focuses on

the most intangible of forms such as sound, light and

connectivity by modifying the function or the reception

of the place where he is asked to intervene, rather like

in the artwork exhibited here called Spectre. According

to Sean O’Toole, one of the first South African critics to

write about his work: “He can make light and sound

theatrical to the point that they also evoke their own

dysfunctions.” It is with great ease that James Webb

merges fiction and theatre, to the extent that we start

to believe that even if a space seems to have a specific

function, everything is reversible. As Webb underlines:

“I am fascinated by the dynamics of belief, not just in

a religious, theatrical and social way, but also in an art

historical and economic way. I never studied art or

music at university. Instead, I read for degrees in Drama

and Comparative Religion. I also obtained a diploma

in Copywriting. These three subjects, along with an

appetite for cinema and experimental music, are keys to

my contemporary art practice.”

The video entitled Le Marché Oriental involved inviting

an Imam4 to sing the call to prayer in the remains of an

Apartheid-era building that functioned as a segregated

market called The Oriental Plaza before its demolition

and transformation into luxury apartments. This

artwork places the viewer inside the place which is

destined for destruction, bathed as it is in a perfect but

worrying tranquillity, which is that of the resistance

echoing all the imposed and suffered injustices. The

person reciting the Adhan is never revealed, the

absence transcends daily reality giving these moving

images a spiritual dimension prior to the erasure of any

trace of this dark period in South Africa.

James Webb says: “My interest in religious belief has to

do with how we articulate our position in the universe,

how we choose to give certain things power”. This is how

I would introduce Know Thy Worth, a work that relates

to the value we bestow on ourselves. Somewhat

cynically, this ancient saying reviews the concept of

capitalism and self-evaluation. The Greek aphorism

“Know Thyself” decorated the entrance to the oracle

in Delphi, where the priestess Pythia officiated behind

a veil, understood here as reference to the subtraction

from representation, a disembodied voice whose

esoteric associations are still so praised. This specially

hand-written5 modus operandi evokes finance and

self-worth, a speculative metaphor to encourage a

particularly vigilant and receptive state.

1. https://soundcloud.com/theotherjameswebb2. http://www.daratalfunun.org/3. The cemetery of Skogskyrkogården in Stockholm:

www.letmelosemyself.com4. Sheikh Mogamat Moerat of the mosque of Six’ Zeenatu Islam Majid5. This calligraphy was made by Mohammed Abu Aziz,

one of the most renowned calligraphists of Jordan.

par/by Cécile Bourne-Farrell

James Webb, Know Thy Worth (Connais ta valeur), 2014. Sculpture en aluminium laqué noir. Dimensions variables. Édition de 5 + 2 EACourtesy de l’artiste et Imane Farès

DEPLIANT_Nous_BAT.indd 7 23/12/14 23:51

Voice In The Wilderness

MAIL & GUARDIAN NOVEMBER 2010

‘Finally, there’s something to look at.’ The barbed remark came from a blue-rinsed coif lurking in a corner

of the Johannesburg Art Gallery’s basement. Its wearer, now staring at a slowly-turning mirrorball, had just

been relieved of the chore of pondering James Webb’s untitled light intervention at the south entrance to

the gallery, a work which presents viewers with an unusual challenge. Visible beyond the gallery’s grounds,

the ancient hanging light flickers on and off by night and beams a secret morse code message to the

residents of Joubert Park’s sea of highrise apartments. Nowhere in the gallery is a decoded version of the

message presented. The utterance exists as a pure cipher, forcing viewers to apply their knowledge of

morse code or else struggle with its inscrutability.

Webb’s work was met with more confusion than delight during a recent morning walkabout of the group

exhibition Relfex/Reflexion, on which the piece features. Though his rimy critic was treated to a daytime,

close-up viewing, as well as a rare revelation of the secret message, the lack of visual candor in the work

positioned it as something wholly foreign to the realm of art. Though extreme, her position reflects an

assumption still endemic in the South African art world today, namely that art will always defer to the

visual. The value of paintings trumps that of performances, just as tangible themes are preferable to

profound thoughts. This is the context in which James Webb, like his lonely light, beats out a companionless

path as a conceptual artist.

He has been saved from obscurity, though, by his unassailable productivity and a growing international

presence, not to mention an enviable dose of charm and wit. Reflex/Reflexion is one of three exhibitions

on which Webb features in his first major sortie into the Johannesburg art scene. Having opened his first

solo exhibition in Johannesburg at the ABSA Gallery at 6.15 on November 10, he went on to open his

second one at GoetheOnMain at 7.30pm on the same day.

In a rather dilatory fulfillment of his contract with ABSA after winning the ABSA l’Atelier competition in

2008, Webb curated Terms of Surrender, an exhibition of already-existing and new works that collectively

form a kind of requiem for lost power. In a work titled Ost an elderly former citizen of the German

Democratic Republic sings the East German anthem in a quavering voice. In another, Untitled (19th April),

we hear a recording of the autopsy report of David Koresh, the leader of an American religious group

called the Branch Davidians. As if in a farewell to Koresh and his apostles, the gallery is adorned with

Ikebana, a type of traditional Japanese flower arrangement historically used in offerings to the souls of the

dead. By now having succumbed to their own short lifespans, Webb’s special Ikebana arrangements were

made by Derry Ralph – a member of the little known organisation Oriental Arts South Africa – using only

alien plants and weeds wrested from pavements in the northern suburbs.

Each of these works represents the last gasp of a dying empire, and Webb’s concoction of this project for

ABSA is not without a measure of tragic wit. The ABSA gallery, which has more the atmosphere of a

cheap funeral parlour than a respectable art institution, is desolate on any given day. ABSA staff perhaps

glance in occasionally on their way to the lurid cafeteria, and thanks to a front-desk security rigmarole

reminiscent of apartheid’s pass system, the place is exceptionally unwelcoming to the public.

At face value, Aleph, Webb’s project at GoetheonMain, offers some relief after Terms of Surrender’s dark

gaze. Aleph is an installation of sound recordings of women praying in ‘tongues’, a practice of glossolalia

which pentecostal christians believe to be a powerful heavenly language. The work comprises eight

recordings of prayers, all playing simultaneously and at equal volume, through wall-mounted speakers.

Supplementing these recordings are eight short texts transcribing dream narratives which Webb’s subjects

believe to have spiritual significance. Heard from a small distance, the prayers blend together in the echoey

room, undulating in volume and rhythm. The effect is overwhelmingly oceanic, an appropriate comparison

given the recurrent symbolism of water in the accompanying dream narratives.

Close up, the earnestness of the individual prayers can be touching, embarrassing or seductive, depending

on one’s own feelings towards pentecostal Christianity. Though an atheist himself, Webb’s position on this

religious act is not critical. ‘For a religious person, I would like this installation to be a religious experience,

‘ he says. ‘My interest in religious belief has to do with how we articulate our position in the universe, how

we choose to give certain things power’.

As with many of Webb’s works, Aleph centers on an act of hermetic communication. Like the untitled light

work at the JAG, the prayers in Aleph are secret messages uttered in a coded language. Both morse code

and tongues are languages in which interpretation requires a special skill, either endowed by heaven or

acquired through practice. However, many believers see the interpretation of tongues as superfluous. It

serves its purpose as a mode of intrapersonal communication. It is the ultimate act of solipsism. And in this

light, paradoxically, Aleph seems to testify to the estrangement of the world from a god figure.

In a vastly underrated book called The Space of Literature, French theorist Maurice Blanchot seemed to

foresee the work of Webb and his choirs of lone cries. Discussing the relationship between art and culture,

he writes: ‘Art was once the language of the gods; it seems, the gods having disappeared, that art remains

the language in which their absence speaks.’ Behind the weeded gardens, interrupted lights, codes,

curiosities and cadavers Webb has left Johannesburg after his whirlwind visit, there is one resoundingly

clear feeling: the dull grey comfort of a godless epiphany.

*Terms of Surrender runs at the ABSA Gallery until November 26 at 4pm, and Aleph runs at

GoetheonMain until December 16. ABSA Gallery: 011 350 5793. GoetheonMain: 011 442 3232.

ArtBio of the month

BY RENEE HOLLEMAN WWW.ARTTHROB.CO.ZA/ARTBIO/JAMES-WEBB-BY-RENEE-HOLLEMAN, JUNE 2010

Introduction

One of the most iconic artists in South Africa today, James Webb has established a terrain quite apart from

that of his contemporaries. Often described as a ‘pioneer’, his innovative focus on sound as a distinctive

medium has done much to expand the vocabulary of artistic practice locally, while quietly and steadily

garnering attention on the international stage. This emphasis, combined with a strategic conceptualism,

humour and a ready sense of wonder has evolved into a sensibility that seeks to engage both site and

audience with an evocative mix of the tangible and intangible, seen and unseen.

Although Webb has been an active producer for some time now, not only as an artist, but as a musician

and occasional curator, his reputation has grown substantially in the last few years. Since winning the

Absa L’Atelier Award in 2008 he has been on a span of residencies, also exhibiting extensively around

the globe. This Artbio is an update, and largely looks at James Webb’s production since 2004. For further

information visit www.theotherjameswebb.com

Webb has connected and collaborated with various luminary figures in the avant garde music and

experimental sound scene including Brendon Busy, James Sey, Brian Eno, Francisco Lopez, Holger

Czukay, Otomo Yoshihide.

Modus Operandi

Webb’s work ranges from subtle interventions and elegantly refined installations to public participatory

events. Often these arise from an intense concern with the politics of a site, and a desire to open that

site up to a different set of associations. Employing sound in variety of a ways Webb creates imaginative

spaces that overlap with the physical space in which the work is presented.

Above all things perhaps, Webb is a consummate collector. His avid curiosity and keen approach to

sourcing and gathering sounds and noises has been likened by one writer to that of an intrepid nineteenth

century naturalist. Accordingly, he gathers the thuds, whistles and hums of ordinary things that barely

warrant a second thought, to those so largely unheard that for the most part they can be hardly said to exist.

These are by no means just incidental sounds either. The blast of the Noonday Gun that resounds daily

across the Cape Town city bowl, and which Webb captured from twelve different locations for ‘Listening

to the world today’, 2004, is certainly not unusual to the accustomed city inhabitant. It still however has

the power to surprise. In contrast, the curious range of clicks, clangs and drone of underground machinery

that constitute ‘The Black Passage’, Webb’s recording of the ascent and descent of the empty elevator

cage of South Africa’s South Deep mine; the deepest twin-shaft goldmine in the world, are alien and

unsettling despite not being particularly remarkable in themselves.

The process of collecting extends into a studio practice that involves intense research, and the constant

editing and re-arranging of material in relation to the process of production and final presentation of the

work. In presentation Webb is undoubtedly an elegant minimalist. With all his work one has a sense of the

effort put into suggesting or conveying an idea in the most refined manner, an almost conceptual slight of

hand, where it is the mere flick of the wrist that reveals the magic card. This is not without due attention to

the other features of the work.

“There are definite sensory elements to all my projects, even though some are merely suggested and

are there for the audience to interpret. A work like “Prayer” has a tactile part in that the audience kneels

down in front of the floor-based speakers to properly hear the words therein. This physical action is a

reference to supplication and genuflection; and an important performative and participatory aspect of

the installation.”

“Furthermore, my audio works are never just about audio.” explains Webb. “There are many thematic

and conceptual intentions at work. “The Black Passage” is not just about mining. Yes, the work is an audio

recording of an elevator descending the shaft of the world’s deepest goldmine, but this is also a symbol.

The reason I chose such a lyrical and Lynchian title was to open the image up to themes of transcendence,

mythic journeys and liminal states. It’s also a pun on “back passage” which opens the metaphor up

significantly.”

To say that Webb cultivates a practice of sound, as is often asserted, is perhaps only correct in as

much as his is really a practice of listening. Listening not just to hear, but in a way that tends to shift

one’s attention away from the work alone to incorporate the environment in which it is situated, and to

open up alternative spaces for thinking. ‘Autohagiography’, 2007, is perhaps Webb’s most extraordinary

combination of sound, text and spatial dislocation. A recording of the artist under hypnosis recounting his

past life experiences played from a speaker set into the headrest of a chaise longue, it expands both the

temporal and physical frame of everyday experience in disturbingly elastic ways. This shift then registers as

an amplification of sorts; your life, but slightly louder, maybe clearer, and is something which governs both

his audio and non-audio works. Previously Webb has described ‘listening and doing nothing’ as both a

working methodology and a creative act, and one that I would suggest he endeavors to allow his audience

to experience themselves. Audience, as always, is a crucial consideration in his work. “My projects have

many audiences, some of which are incidental, and not all of them might approach the work in terms of an

art framework. “There’s No Place Called Home” could be said to have four audiences: the birds that have a

new and foreign birdcall in their territory, the people who hear the call in the public space but do not know

that it is an intervention, the gallery audience who are privy to the artwork but not the actual experience

of the intervention, and myself, the artist, who conducts the affair. This project also has a distinctly visual

experience. When you hear the birdcalls, you mentally see birds.” ‘There’s No Place Called Home’, 2005,

was first installed in Japan with South African summer birds broadcast in winter trees during Webb’s

residency in Kitakyushu. It has subsequently been installed all over the world, each time slightly and wryly

adjusted to the context and region in which it is exhibited. It is this degree of curiosity, subtle perspicacity,

and attention to detail that are the hallmarks of James Webb’s practice.

Artists Statement

‘I am fascinated by the dynamics of belief, not just in a religious, theatrical and social way, but also in an art

historical and economic way. I never studied art or music at university. Instead, I read for degrees in Drama

and Comparative Religion. I also obtained a diploma in Copywriting. These three subjects, along with an

appetite for cinema and experimental music, are keys to my contemporary art practice.

Derren Brown, Dorothy Parker, Delia Derbyshire, Orson Welles, Spike Milligan: these are some of my

references.’

‘The realm of sight is broken down into all manner of media and traditions. Sound’s very different cultural

activities are herded into the same kraal and broken down to their lowest common denominator. In order

for it to be an effective material, one must understand its nature, history and language, and this goes far

beyond an interest in the scientific and demonstrative elements of the medium and its reduced function as

music/entertainment, into the realms of its emotional associations, cultural uses and political implications.’

From an interview with Rahma Khazam, ‘Ghosts and Spectres – For a broader approach to Sound Art’,

2009

What others have said

“In Webb’s work sound is often used as a kind of avatar, to bring together a concern with mystical or deeply

buried psychological experience, physical contextual meaning and ephemeral aesthetics.” Minnette Vári,

“Currencies of change,” .ZA Giovane Arte Dal Sudafrica catalogue, Palazzo delle Papesse, 2008

“James Webb is lonely … Lonely not as a cliché of artistic being, of being bitter, broke and unacknowledged;

rather, lonely as a form of practice, of ritual, lonely as an effervescence, a defining cause …” Sean O’Toole.

“A sweet and tender hooligan” in The history of a decade that has not yet been named, Catalogue to the

Lyon Biennale, 2007

“James Webb is usually hailed as its principal South African pioneer and exponent (of Sound Art), however

the artist demonstrates such nonchalant mastery of conceptual strategies, that his work transcends all

rubrics.” Lloyd Pollak, “Enter The Sonic Magician,” SA Art Times, May 2007

“…Acts such as these are also riffs on the irony and bittersweet absurdity of everyday life, reflecting Webb’s

characteristic dark humour. …Webb is a master of the poetic environmental intervention, the hack as haiku;

most of all, his is that most South African form, the prank, but made zen, reduced to its littlest intuitive

moment. …Webb plants the seeds of implosion, the event that creates beautiful confusion and makes the

unhomely homely – but homely for aliens, amusement park lonely souls, and lost and caged birds.” Julian

Jonker – “Haunted Weather,” Art South Africa, Volume 4 Issue 3, Autumn 2006

“…And that’s the real power of Webb’s work. It is playful and cheeky and damn funny, but it’s also deeply

and squeamishly personal. It deals with his alienation, dispossession, perversion and isolation. It’s a

soliloquy highlighting the import of the apparently insignificant. Allowing us to contemplate the magic of

the ordinary, as well as to comprehend the ordinariness of the seemingly profound. This inversion, along

with the inventiveness of his trickster antics, make his work endlessly provocative – at once irksome and

inviting, silly yet seductive, witty and whimsical, teasing and teaching us to appreciate the intimate yet

elusive phenomena that is life.” Stacy Hardy – “That Subliminal Kid,” Art South Africa, Volume 4 Issue 3,

Autumn 2006

“…Sad and beautiful… …undeniably elegant…” Linda Stupart – “Best of 2005,” http://www.artthrob.

co.za/06feb/news/bestof.html February 2006

“James Webb is another artist from Cape Town whose work can be understood as a productive interplay

with spatial and geographic determinations, though in a completely distinct way. His success story might

be unique, yet for artists feeling underexposed or disconnected it can stand as an example of an artist

who, while struggling with local conditions, remains true to his intentions and gets recognition from his

peers.” Thomas Boutoux – Flash Art International n° 225 July – September 2002

Currently

James Webb is having a busy year. Presently he is an artist-in-residence at USF, Bergen and is gearing up

for a large show at Gallery Stiftelsen 3,14. These series of projects are co-commissioned by BEK (Bergen

Center for Electronic Arts). He is also preparing for a solo show in June in the UK at Nottingham’s Djanogly

Gallery where he will be presenting ‘Autohagiography’ and a city-specific version of ‘Prayer’. In May, Webb

will be taking part in ‘No Soul For Sale – A Festival of Independents’ at the Tate Modern, an exhibition

that brings together respected not-for-profit centers, alternative institutions, artists’ collectives and

independent enterprises from around the world. In June he opens his solo show at the Djanogly Gallery,

and also sees him exhibit in Berlin on ‘Ampersand, Daimler Contemporary’ with ‘Untitled’ and a new

work titled ‘Love Conquers All’. At the same time he will be exhibiting on ‘Istanbul, Athens, Marrakech,

Palermo, Catania’ at the Riso Museo d’Arte Contemporanea della Sicilia, Palermo, with photographic

documentation of ‘There’s No Place Called Home’.

Before that

Webb’s first exhibition this year, a solo show at Blank projects, titled ‘One day, all of this will be yours,’ linked

together a variety of site-specific and multi media projects produced over the last nine years. The show

included works from his 2004/2005 residency in Japan, projects conducted in Cape Town, and early

works like ‘Know thy worth’, 2001, translated into arabic as ‘E’raf Qeematak’ and written over the Blank

projects gallery sign. This was linked to ‘Le Marché Oriental’, a short film with a sound track recording

of Sheik Mogamat Moerat from the District Six Zeenatul Islam Majid mosque singing the adaan (call to

prayer) in the old abandoned Oriental Plaza, prior to its demolition in 2008. Both made reference to the

proximity of the gallery to District Six and the rehabilitation and gentrification of the Woodstock environ.

2009 saw Webb producing a public installation at Melbourne International Arts Festival consisting of

a multi lingual public service announcement broadcast from a series of speakers along a walkway at

Northbank on the Yarra River, declaring, “Ladies and Gentlemen, your attention please. You are reminded

that everything is fine.” Both authoritative and authentic sounding the announcements conveyed both a

sense of calm familiarity and mistrust. Webb worked with a group of Melbourne teenagers in a series of

workshops to conceptualise the work. Webb was also included on the 3rd Arts in Marrakech biennale,

curated by Abdellah Karroum where he presented ‘Le Marché Oriental’. The piece further won second

place at the Documentary Film Makers’ Association’s “Home Town” short film competition at the 2009

Encounters Film Festival.

And before that

In 2008 Webb staged a site-specific intervention at the Museo Reina Sofía, Spain’s National Museum of

Art, which houses an extensive collection of twentieth century masters, the most famous being Picasso’s

‘Guernica’. Webb invited staff of the museum to scream at the piece, and in so doing ‘raise issues around

contemporary history, the horror of war, the function of art and ‘Guernica’s’ status as an art icon.’

In the same year he presented a lecture at ‘Call & Response’ a series of events including performances,

panels and discussions hosted by Candice Breitz at MUDAM Luxembourg. This was aimed at exploring

the interactive logic of call-and-response (a key musical idea in oral cultures) and reflecting on strategies

of artistic appropriation and creative recycling.

In 2007 Webb was invited to participate in the 9th Biennale de Lyon, ‘The 00’s – The History of a Decade

That Has Not Yet Been Named’, curated by Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Stephanie Moisdon & Thierry Raspail,

where he exhibited ‘The Black Passage’.

Prior to this he collaborated with Francisco Lopez on a one night event in Cape Town titled ‘September 1st’.

75 people were invited to the event, but were told nothing about what they would experience. They were

collected from their homes individually, asked to sign an indemnity form, sworn to secrecy, blindfolded,

and taken in silence through the city by car to an undisclosed location where they were led through a series

of lifts and passages to a room. Here they were treated to a sound concert by Francisco Lopez whereafter

they were collected from their chairs, led back to the waiting vehicles and returned to their homes. The

blindfold was then removed and no mention was made of the event.

And even before that

Winter 2006 saw Webb taking occupancy of Blank Projects at their previous location in the Bo-Kaap in Cape

Town, with a subtle intervention into the bare gallery space. The press release stated of ‘Untitled’: «While the

gallerists are away for six weeks, the empty space will be haunted by faulty electricity resulting in the gallery

lights flickering in Morse code.The unspoken message, known only to the artist, will glimmer continuously,

though is best viewed at night through the space’s shop front window.» The piece was subsequently shown

at the Durban Art Gallery, 2006, Nirox Sculpture Park, 2007 and Bergen Kunsthall, 2009.

In 2005 Webb returned from an 8-month residency at CCA Kitakyushu, Japan. The trip marked a

distinct shift in his practice and a development of his concerns, and also allowed him to engage with other

professional experimental sound practitioners. Key works produced during this time were ‘There’s No

Place Called Home’, ‘Homme Alone’ and ‘Saturday Night Can Be The Loneliest Place on Earth’. In the

latter, the artist hacked into the public address system of ‘Space World’, a space age theme park that had

seen better days, interrupting the muzak with a broadcast of ionospheric transmissions ( impulsive signals

emitted by lightning strokes relayed live using a VLF receiver) allowing it to receive an actual message from

outer space.

Next Up

In September, Webb will take part in ‘Images Of My World,’ a multi-city Danish arts festival, where he

will be presenting a new installation and citywide interventions as well as collaborating with Francisco

Lopez on a special project for the city. His second solo show in the UK at MAC Birmingham also opens in

September where he will be exhibiting ‘The Black Passage’ as well as ‘Untitled (9th August)’ and a series

of brand new works in a variety of media.

South African audiences can look forward to another new piece that Webb is in the process of creating

– a contemporary South African version of Orson Welles’s radio artwork, ‘The War Of The Worlds.’ He

writes “It will fuse my interests in politics, magick and frenzy, and be a very exciting opportunity to properly

create an artwork for radio in the context of post–1994 South Africa.”

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James Webb - Imane Farès

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